


The Last of the Chants

by x_los



Series: Glitter Is The Gold [1]
Category: Blake's 7, Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones, The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Crossover, Diana Wynne Jones - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 20:13:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4800737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Chrestomanci is dead. Aven has two other lives out there in the Related Worlds, but he knows he's <i>almost</i> good enough - and certainly there can be no one who wants the position more. He'd do almost anything. Unfortunately for him, linking with a fire demon is a serious misuse of magic, and in Aven's absence, the Castle's managed to finally find the person responsible for dealing with that sort of thing. </p><p>(Not an AU in <i>quite </i> the way you might think.) (I think you can read this without knowing the DWJ—or even without knowing the B7, though you might have less incentive.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last of the Chants

**Author's Note:**

> The names aren't typos, but an AU thing.
> 
> beta: aralias  
> first reader: elviaprose  
> people who don't know how fire works, actually: the three of us, my entire twitter feed
> 
> I don't think I would have written this if Ika hadn't already written a Blake's 7 Chrestomanci crossover. (I know, right? This fandom has two inexplicable Chrestomanci crossovers now, no less than three somewhat-more-explicable Much Ados, etc.)

It took Aven some time to find his falling star. For a start, he had to go to the right universe, and walking between universes wasn't an easy matter for him. That, actually, was the whole problem of his life. Still, he could just about manage to get himself next door to dull, magicless 12-B without using a traceable pentacle. What was normally a fairly difficult working was made more so by the fact that Aven suspected he’d be pursued by people who knew both him and their business well.

In 12-B, Aven used a door that had been set up centuries before in Wales to travel to a place where magic worked in a way that would make what Aven wanted to do possible. Having pulled himself through this door, he then consulted with the Royal Wizard of Ingary. She told him where he'd have the best chance of finding what he wanted. This was sensitive information, but she assumed, naturally, that Aven (a known attache of the Chrestomanci) was here for research purposes, and not about to get up to anything illegal or stupid.

She was quite wrong, but Aven wasn't going to be the one to disillusion her.

In the marshes near Portshaven, with the sound of the sea dim in his ears, Aven waited, getting colder but feeling it very little. Thinking about almost nothing, now. He'd come this far. He wasn't about to turn back.

When the first white streak crossed the sky, he smiled grimly and willed himself fast and accurate, and so was–though not graceful. He was naturally clumsy, and had developed manner and deliberation in order to compensate for it. The effect fell apart hideously at speed. Aven running was a confusion of lumpen charge and flailing sharp edges, and there were some things magic couldn't fix. Not many, he was prone to think, but he would admit to some. Mostly, he tried to avoid the sort of situation where he'd have to expose himself thus.

The star looked likely to escape him, and so Aven dove like a cricketer, hand up, fingers scrabbling, and caught at it. He held the star in his palm, closed his fingers over it and squeezed.

"Let me go!" the thing demanded crossly. "I insist you let me go!"

"Not a chance," Aven snarled. "You and I are going to be very useful to one another. What are you called?"

"Orac. And as I am quite an efficacious fire demon, I would suggest you release me!"

“Well then, Orac—do you want to die?" Aven demanded of the thing, struggling to his feet and keeping a grip on it. “That is just what you’ll do, if I comply with your request.”

"I most certainly do not! There is much still to learn and to do. And yet, it seems I must."

Aven laughed at the bitterness that radiated out of the little ball of light, recognizing a touch of affinity between the two of them. Perhaps he hadn't caught this star by accident. He dared to think that perhaps this was meant to be, that it just needed _him_ to bring it about. That perhaps this wasn't madness, but _exactly_ what he ought to do. Besides, he didn’t like the idea of the thing dying for no purpose. So much still to learn and do. He could certainly understand that.

"I am a powerful enchanter," Aven explained.

" _Obviously_. I can sense as much," Orac huffed.

“Good." Aven's mouth twitched, but the grin dropped before it fully formed. "What _I_ want, Orac, is a contract. You may have my heart, such as it is," and here again, his mouth moved in some winsome shape, like and unlike a smile, "if you can establish a link between us. You'll survive then, won't you? Which is what _you_ want.”

"It is illogical for you to offer such a bargain," Orac snapped, yet Aven could tell it was considering his proposition. Demons were amoral things, but they wanted what only humans could give: brute vitality, a human’s ideas and a human’s living magic, so different from the austere glory of their own static star-stuff. So easily shaped to myriad new forms.

"Not illogical at all," Aven said smoothly. “There’s something I want very much, and you're going to help me get it." Even if what he was planning to do with Orac’s magic didn't work, the very power such a link would provide him with would be consolation, of a sort. Aven might well be more powerful even than… whoever would take his place. And he wouldn't be inadequate, wouldn't have to _feel_ inadequate, if he were so much _stronger_ than the thing he'd wanted. If he could learn to sneer at it, and if he were mighty enough to do so honestly.

"Here," Aven said, trying to coax with a voice little used to it, "in here. It's a chill night, and I imagine you've only known the aching cold of the sky, before this. In here, it's warm." Aven unbuttoned his jacket, and, with a hand shaking at the enormity of what he was doing, gathered Orac to him and let the little flame burn into his chest.

"That's is," he gasped, shutting his eyes, his mouth dropping open. It was horrible and invasive, like a nightmare version of sex, and still he grit his teeth against the pain and pushed the thing in deeper. He didn't need his heart, anyway. What in hell was he going to do with a thing like that? All he needed was—

Orac’s power pulsed through him, and Aven fell to his knees. Would it take? It might not. He'd known he might die, and that he only had one death to give.

Yes, there, _there_ , it _was_ settling! He was a molten living star. His heart was detached from his body, Orac had consumed it, and he felt weightless and free. How wonderful it was not to care! How cold and aching and empty and lonely even with Orac there and— _No_ , he _wanted_ this, and it wasn't as though anyone else wanted his heart of him.

Aven panted, his blood swimming in his ears and Orac's starlight coursing through him. He could feel it humming through his bones, resounding in the cavity where his heart had sat, gathering force there as it echoed in the little, empty chamber. He began to laugh, and laughed himself hoarse.

"Aven," a voice he didn't recognize said behind him, and Aven turned to look.

A strange man. Taller than Aven would be, if he were standing. Aven felt a flash of slight annoyance at that, which worried him because he was a living god now, and would nothing _ever_ be enough? Surely nothing could ever hurt him again. Surely now he was, at last, sufficient unto himself. He just had to know these things, and they would be true.

" _Aven_ ," the stranger repeated. "I've been sent after you."

"Sent after me?" Aven repeated with a slow, strange smile. "From 12-A, I presume? I'd like to know how—No, wait. I don't care. What do you intend to do, remonstrate with me?"

The other man raised an eyebrow. "I plan on taking you in, by any means necessary. What you've just done is an incredibly dangerous misuse of magic, as no one knows better than you. I wish I'd arrived in time to prevent it—but I expect it’s fixable. I _hope_ it’s fixable – I'd hate for you to waste your life on a thing like this.”

"By any means necessary?" Aven repeated, chuckling. "I'd like to see you try."

He'd laughed, but the man's words disturbed him. Aven wanted to tell the presumptuous interloper that _he_ hadn't wasted anything, that this was his chance and he'd seized it, though the other man's opinion should hardly matter to him. He needed to seal his chest, to protect Orac and himself until they got somewhere secure and Orac, bearing his heart, could be given over to a sturdy hearth.

The stranger shrugged. "You're certainly carrying a lot of raw energy, but you don't know how to use whatever the demon’s given you yet. And I'd imagine your own, considerable magic feels neither comfortable nor familiar at present."

Aven's expression… shifted a bit, because that hadn't occurred to him. And it was true. And it wasn't good news.

"I remain the most gifted enchanter of my generation," Aven said matter-of-factly. Not bragging, just apprising the other man of the fact.

"The second-most, I think you'll find," the stranger corrected him.

Aven had a sudden, sick presentiment. "Who the hell are you?" he snarled.

The other man shrugged. "The most gifted, or so they tell me." Without warning, the stranger pulled the marshes up and the very sea to him, and brought a ton of brackish water crashing down on Aven. Orac (pressed against Aven) writhed in instinctual terror, and Aven slammed his body down over the creature, pressing it to the dry ground, keeping it and his own heart safe.

"It's all right," Aven whispered frantically to the pulsing, terrified star. "I've got you, I’ve—"

It was all Aven could do to protect and try and calm the fire demon, to keep his body from being pulverized by the water beating down onto him, and to force up a shield that allowed him air to breathe, a release from the pressure, and a modicum of safety for Orac. _Damn_. If his pursuer had arrived just an hour later—how had he been tracked?

Even through the charge of water, the earth was rising up in a cage around him, and Aven could feel metal being pulled from the earth around _that_. Layers of cages were enclosing him, and outside them the sea continued to beat down. He couldn't have much air.

"Sorry about the water pressure," the stranger said a little ruefully, his voice as clear to Aven as though he'd spoken just over his shoulder—a sending spell, over-charged, crackling with energy. Amateurish. "I don't exactly know my own strength. This is all a bit new to me. Before, or much longer after the compact, and I'd have been at a real disadvantage–I doubt I could have taken you at any other time.”

Having failed to catch him in time to talk him down, the damn man had sat there in the swamp as Aven exposed himself. He’d watched Aven swallow with pathetic fear and shiver as Orac burrowed into his chest, and all the while the other man had been gathering the iron of the earth to him, and oh god Aven knew what he was and _hated_ him for it.

"You'll run out of air," the stranger cautioned him.

"I had _noticed_ ," Aven said to himself. Patronizing _bastard_. "Any suggestions, Orac?"

"Surrender is our most probable means of—"

"Shut up, Orac."

"I am merely—"

Aven ignored it, breathing hard, soaked and cold and shaking with rage and physical exhaustion. Water canons bloody well hurt. He knew they could take out their victims’ eyes and cause internal bleeding, the way they used them in 12-B and 1.

“Aven—”The stranger spoke into his ear again, in that awful, sympathetic register. “I have the device from the Castle with me. The one that,” he paused a moment, as though what he was about to say was abhorrent to him, but he was nevertheless determined to say it, “mutilates you. Strips your power. _Please_ don't make me use it. Swear you'll come out and let me fix this, and I _will_ believe you.”

The stranger waited while Aven processed that, seemingly hoping for a response. Aven had known it might come to this, but the prospect was, somehow, more horrifying even than the possibility that Orac might have killed him, trying to get at his heart.

The stranger continued, as if sensing Aven’s sudden lurch of stark fear in the persistent silence. “You have friends, back at the Castle. They want me to bring you back safe. And I intend to, if I can. I can't promise you won't be punished for this, but I will do everything in my power to make it as easy I can for you.” And it was humiliating, the degree to which Aven found himself affected by the way he knew the staff and the other researches would pity him, brought home in chains and possibly robbed of his magic. How disappointed in him some of them would be, when they understood what he’d done. Jenny would think him such a fool.

“Just _talk_ to me,” The other man’s voice had the edge of a plea in it. Aven wondered why, when he must know he’d won.

Aven constructed his own speaking spell with a thought. It was much better than the stranger's. Which, unfortunately, didn’t change anything.

"All right," he said, curtly.

There it was. Surrender had become the only reasonable option. Aven couldn't _believe_ how quickly this had turned, how completely he'd been defeated.

"Give me your word," the stranger insisted, voice firm.

"Well now, and what would my word mean to you?" After all, the man knew what Aven had done.

"Oh, enough, I think," the stranger said.

" _Fine_. I give it. With all due oaths. Would you like me to swear them?"

"That won't be necessary," the stranger told him.

Gently, the barriers eased back. Aven could hear the water ebbing back to its cradle, could feel the iron rumbling home, could see the sky as the earth cracked and eased down and away.

"This is all most interesting," Orac ventured to murmur, and in spite of his black mood, Aven felt a touch of wry amusement.

The stranger offered Aven a hand; Aven ignored it. Dripping and incensed, wincing (he thought he might had been seriously injured, but he couldn't tell), Aven stood, facing the stranger.

A stubborn face. Curly hair. Intelligent eyes.

Aven tilted his own chin up with defiance, trying not to care that he must resemble a drowned rat.

"I'm Roger Blake," the other man said.

"No," Aven corrected him, resentment curling his lip, "you're the Chrestomanci."

***

"Aren't you going to use magic-dampening cuffs?" Aven asked, stepping close enough that Blake could transport them. He’d already tidied himself with a series of spells, allowing himself the gestural indulgence of activating one by bushing a shoulder off. He hated feeling dirty. He hated feeling battered and defeated and humiliated, too, but there weren’t spells to mend that. As for the less psychological effects of his ignominious adventure, he’d have to wait for someone to look him over and see if the water had cracked a rib or something of the kind. He’d never been good with medical witchcraft, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask whether Blake was.

"You promised me you'd let me fix you, and that's what you're going to do," Blake told him with a shrug. Aven eyed the bag at Blake’s shoulder, which must contain the Series One gun capable of stripping his magic, warily.

"Besides," Blake continued, "I've no idea where to find those cuffs, or how to use them if I had them. I did _look_."

"I hid the castle's supply before I left. Thus they were _not_ to be found in the armaments room, in the top drawer next to the hanging mermaid manacles. You should have rung the constabulary for replacements, though if you had, you’d have found they only stock warlock-grade, and you would have had to wait for Scotland Yard to lend you something stronger. Where's David Evans? He's your secretary now, he ought to have told you this."

"Scouring London for you. I'm afraid he didn't believe you'd do anything like this. He was convinced you had been kidnapped by Dright with mysterious but grim intentions, or were mourning my predecessor's death in a tavern somewhere."

Aven snorted. "Le Grand was competent, and I am sorry she's dead, but I'm afraid I was not nursing a ‘grand’ passion for her. Nor have I been driven to madness and dissolution by extra-romantic grief."

"No, you hardly seem the type," Blake said, amused, and Aven wondered what that was supposed to mean. “Actually, no one seems to know what the hell is going on in the castle since your departure. The Head Gardener came in today to ask me where the forest had got to. Any ideas?"

“Oh, I always have ideas. At present, I am in possession of a grim certainty. Will Resthall can drink on his own time, _not_ when he's working. I don’t care if it _is_ cider season," Aven seethed. "He has a bad habit of undertaking some visionary drink-fueled landscaping scheme and falling asleep having set things walking. They'll go on, of course, until they hit the sea—he has enough dwimmer to ensure that. If I have to go and fetch those damned trees back from Dunsinane again—"

Aven stopped short, realizing that it wasn't his problem. Not anymore.

Blake looked at him a little kindly, and Aven disliked his kindness immensely. "Well?" Aven snapped. "What are you waiting for?"

"That relates to my second point, which you seem to have forgotten amongst your arboreal concerns. I don't know how to use the handcuffs, and I don't know how to take you back. You're going to have to show me."

Aven blinked at him. "You want me to… assist you. In my own capture."

"You did agree," Blake said reasonably.

Aven felt his face assume a terrible stillness. He had run out of anger and disbelief and every other emotion, in the face of this Blake's incredible… Blakeness. "How did you get here?"

Blake shrugged. "I walked. I've always been able to do it. I wasn't aware it was particularly unusual, before this week. I mean people _do_ visit other worlds. You’re doing it right now. I just haven't taken another person through with me before, is the trouble."

"You knew that you could walk, unaided, through to other Series, and you didn't stop to consider whether the on-going search for the next Chrestomanci might _involve_ _you?_ "

Blake sighed. "I rather hoped it didn’t. And I assumed I'd have been picked up, by now, if it had."

Aven blinked again to see if all this would go away. It didn't.

"An incredibly powerful enchanter hoped we weren't looking for him, and the highly-publicised seeking spells meant to find him simply ceased to identify him. _Brilliant_."

Blake raised an eyebrow. "I think you must be right. Rather a stupid blind spot, really."

" _My_ stupid blind spot, I think you'll find," Aven seethed. "Because I couldn't believe that anyone would—" He shut himself up and breathed, glaring at Blake.

Blake gave him an unimpressed look. "You couldn't believe that anyone wouldn't want to drop whatever they were doing to live where the government told them and be a minister for life, answering to anyone who calls their name, undertaking immense responsibility even as they de facto involve themselves in the dubious imperial politics of a predestined position always inherited by someone British? _Really?_ Because I'm not finding it all _that_ unfathomable." Blake's eyes glinted with real anger.

Aven was unwilling to tell Blake that he had never even considered that someone might not want to be the Chrestomanci. It was, after all, all _he_ had ever wanted. And Blake had the _gall_ to treat this as though it were some sort of personal inconvenience, something that ruffled his delicate scruples, rather than a matter of fate and possibly the most necessary role in all of the Related Worlds.

“You can feel this?" Aven twisted a bell-jar of magic around them, and Blake nodded, glancing up and around at it as though it were physically visible. "Try doing what you normally do, but with the jar instead of yourself. Touch my arm, in case. Just take me back. Let’s get this over with."

Blake took his hand instead of touching his arm, and Aven rolled his eyes, and then almost vomited as Blake sent them careening into the Castle foyer.

"Were you trained in a barn?" Aven hissed, dropping Blake's hand immediately and doubling over, trying to recover.

"Trained is a strong word," Blake said agreeably. “But come on—it wasn't _that_ bad."

Perhaps not for someone with Blake's magical constitution, Aven thought darkly. Aven had rather more delicate magical sensibilities.

"We'll have to contact the authorities,”Blake continued. “Your attempt to merge with a fire demon will have triggered some alarms. They'll want explanations. Orac, how are you getting on?"

"Quite well, though I should prefer to be installed in a hearth when we reach wherever you intend to conduct these discussions."

"Right. My office is—" Blake scanned the stairs and passages leading off this central chamber, trying to remember.

"Oh for god's sake," Aven hissed, charging in the right direction. At least the halls were mercifully dark and empty, at this hour.

Blake didn't tell Aven that, earlier, he'd ended up having quite a long conversation with Will Resthall. He’d done this in his attempts to track Aven, whom everyone considered worth worrying over and somehow simultaneously liable to do something hideously dangerous to himself and others. Blake had guessed that he'd need to know why the other man had stormed off after Le Grand's death. That was, he’d thought, the key to understanding where this Aven might have gone, and what he might be doing there.

Will, who'd been Head Gardener at the Castle for five years now, had been very informative. Aven had apparently come to the Castle as a boy, when his great-grandaunt, Erudition Claudia Chant, had been Chrestomanci. He'd been schooled there, at the Academy that had existed on the grounds since 'old De Witt's time’. (Blake could see he was going to have to memorize his predecessors like he'd done lists of Kings and Queens in primary school—they seemed to keep coming up, and he knew some of them by virtue of his history background, but not all). When Chant (the eighth of her line to hold the office, a researcher named Miss Klynn had hurriedly explained, trying to monitor some complex theoretical magic experiments in accordance with the precise, careful notes Aven had left on his lab desk) had died, she'd been succeeded by Le Grande.

Once he'd finished school, Aven had gone to University (Oxford, Theoretical Magic, double-first, and a special research doctorate on top of that—a drawer in Aven's room, which contained no real clues as to where he might have gone). Then he’d returned to the Castle, where Le Grande had taken him on as an aide.

Aven knew the Castle well, and he was a Chant on his mother's side (and that, apparently, counted for a great deal). He was also a superlatively good Enchanter, and a good addition to the staff in his own right. And (though no one had actually said so to Blake), more even than all that, they'd taken Aven on because they could find no sign of the next Chrestomanci. Aven was, by all accounts, the strongest Enchanter they could dredge up– the strongest in the world and possibly the Related Worlds, bar Le Grande herself. Trials indicated that the seat of the power associated with the role, the ancient walled garden on the Castle grounds, partly recognized Aven as compatible. He was not the heir to the position (despite, David had said a little sadly, the previous two holders of the role having run the tests numerous times, _sure_ that the gifted, focused Aven _must_ be their successor, but simply occluded, somehow, as the first Chant Chrestomanci had been). Yet Aven was definitely _not_ a nine-lived enchanter—he seemed to have a duplicate in Series Four and possibly another in difficult-to-search One. He wasn't quite up to requirements, but everyone had thought he might just do in a pinch.

The thing was (the housekeeper, who had been with the castle for forty years, told Blake), Aven had always been incredibly clever. Incredibly powerful. Incredibly privileged. (Even the Argents, the family the Chants had married into when they'd fallen on hard times, as Blake knew from having done history, hadn't been new money themselves since, say, the 1890s. Meanwhile the Chants proper were a _much_ older family of enchanters.) Since Aven was a boy, everyone had been desperately looking for whomever was supposed to succeed Le Grande, and they'd kept looking at _him—_ surely, everyone had thought, the Chant family could produce a ninth Chrestomanci. Aven was the last of them, the line having withered, even down to its cadet branches, but for him.

And Aven himself had wanted it, badly. Had submitted to all of the tests with a kind of frayed hope. The housekeeper remembered Aven first coming to the house. Remembered his pleasure in the tower room that had been his several-greats-uncle's before it had been his. In the old, musty rugs with their infinite spiraling patterns, in the thick choking magic of the grounds, and most of all in the garden, where they had always been able to find him when he'd snuck out of the dormitories as a child. There must have been, Blake imagined, a bittersweet pleasure for him in the garden acknowledging him, but never quite wanting him enough.

Aven had put in endless work. He was brilliant, and intuitively he understood the magic the role required. He looked like half the portraits in the long gallery. All that and _still_ _–_ inadequate. He had been totally inadequate, and had known as much since childhood. Had lived in a home he loved, but that, one day, might not love him back. Had dwelt in a monument to his own helpless shortcoming. And suddenly there had been no one to fill the Related Worlds' most vital magical office, and Aven _still_ hadn't been quite good enough.

With a growing understanding of the nature of the issue, Blake had asked Will what Aven would have done to solve a problem—say, to fix a mistake.

"Oh," Will had said, suddenly fairly serious, "to fix a mistake? _His_ , you mean? Aven's capable of anything."

And with that in mind, Blake had ransacked the libraries and grilled his capable assistants about ways that an Enchanter as strong as Aven might augment their own power. He’d cross-referenced these suggestions against his own increasingly clear idea of what Aven would be willing to do, winnowed the options down to a short list, and started out after him.

Sheer luck, and a sense of the poetic attraction of this particular method, had drawn Blake to the right option first. Unlike Aven, he hadn't had to waste time obscuring his trail, and so he’d arrived only slightly too late.

"Why did you _literally_ give up your soul for power, you stupid, _stupid_ man?" Blake muttered, shoving Aven into a chair in his office like Aven didn't know how to sit. Aven narrowed his eyes at the back of Blake's head.

Oh, it was _obvious_ why, Blake thought darkly. A sense of responsibility, a feeling that they'd run out of other options, and the _hunger_ that had animated Aven's face in the swamp. Blake had been shocked by how desperate the other man had looked. How sad and slight and terribly brave. Aven had known the risk he was taking, had know this might kill him or far, far worse, and had done it all the same. Blake had come too late to speak to him, only in time to watch the delicate operation, which he hadn't dared interrupt for fear of killing the man.

"Sit there and shut up," Blake growled, calling the high-ranking civil servants he was supposed to report to.

The penalty for Aven's crime varied, depending on the degree to which the subject had understood his actions. Unfortunately, Aven had understood his decision perfectly, had known how dangerous the Witch of the Waste became, centuries back, and had still thought _he_ could control the process. The sheer arrogance of the man. He hadn't even cared what might have become of him!

Blake turned on the enchanted mirror with an irritable flick of his hand (Aven winced to note how the lash of raw power almost cracked the thing) and spent an hour arguing hard with bureaucrats who thought Aven should be, at the very least, stripped of his magic entirely. Darker threats were not out of the running, either—Aven’s offense was a capital crime.

Blake glanced over at Aven's pale, resolute face. He'd kill himself, Blake thought, if they took his power off him. He couldn’t live without magic. He _loved_ it. It was the only thing about himself he loved. Couldn't they see that? Dammit, didn't they care?

"No," Blake growled with finality, explaining that he wouldn't countenance either such cruelty or such pointless waste. Aven had been _trying_ to help.

Blake reminded them that, if they hadn't finally located a new Chrestomanci in Aven's absence, some of the secretaries and directors general baying for Aven’s blood would be congratulating him on his initiative instead. But they wouldn't let go. Aven had violated the oaths of his trade, the position he held in the public trust, and proved himself immensely dangerous (privately, Blake thought you just had to _look_ at Aven to know he might be dangerous if he put his mind to it–this shouldn't really have _surprised_ anyone). There hadn’t been a truly tyrannical rogue Enchanter in 12-A since the 17th century (that Enchanter had finally been defeated after having made his last stand in this very castle), but the prospect still made people stupidly nervous.

"I'll watch him until such time as I'm sure he won't do anything rash," Blake told the lot of them, having made his decision. "He'll stay on with me at the Castle, and he'll be _my_ responsibility.” Blake's voice rose over the dissent. "And _then_ , when I'm sure he's recovered from the stress that prompted him to act as he did, and that he won't try for a repeat performance, he can do what he likes."

"You can't simply erase a Category One crime," a Permanent Under Secretary said, shocked. "There must be justice, in these matters!"

"Oh yes,”Blake agreed. “Yes, there _must_ be justice. And fairness. And mercy, too." Something about how absolute he was actually managed to override an entire chain of legally mandated repercussions.

"You're new to your office," some patronizing director or other started in, about to imply that Blake didn't understand the ramifications of his decision, and should let more experienced civil servants handle this. Perhaps he was even right, but all the same, Blake wasn't going to let that happen.

He grinned. "Yes, I am. And I’ve just recently come to understand that magical misuse in another series falls under my jurisdiction. Aven is my affair. If it goes wrong, then I understand it's on my head. But what, gentlemen, if I were simply to leave all this," Blake gestured around him at the office he sat in, "behind me and live in obscurity in—oh I don't know, 12-B? You'd have a devil of a time tracking me and _making_ me do the job, and you know perfectly well that I never wanted this position in the first place. If I were gone, you'd have to forgive Aven rather more completely than you're going to, wouldn't you?"

They let Blake have his way, and Blake turned off the mirror, closed his eyes and slumped in his chair with a loud exhalation, rubbing his face.

"I suppose," Aven spoke, "you expect me to be grateful for your efforts, Chrestomanci."

"Perish the thought," Blake chuckled. "I'm afraid it's me or prison, Aven."

"Yes, I _was_ listening to my own trial, actually." Aven shifted in his chair.

"How does it feel?" Blake asked, opening his eyes to look at Aven. Orac flickered in the fire where Aven had deposited him, apparently occupied with his own concerns.

"The link?" Aven smiled, slow and wicked. "Like I could do _anything_."

"That must be terrifying," Blake said, wiping the smirk off Aven's face and pulling a hard wariness into his eyes. It was the second time Blake had seen this expression—this was what Aven looked like when you told him something true, which he hadn't understood until you said it.

"You'd know," Aven said sharply, “you have so much magic it hurts to look at you."

In fact, it was the raw tangle of strength that made Aven want to just _twitch_ it into place, put in some structure and train the vines of Blake's power over it. It was compelling. No. It was achingly beautiful. Like a garden, over-grown, sick with lush, cancerous fertility. Aven wanted to work it. He wondered what it would look like, and what it could _do,_ if he just set things in order. And he wanted Blake to go to hell, so he wouldn't have to look at it any more.

Blake gave him a rueful smile. “I’ve never been comfortable with it either." Though by all accounts of him, Aven seemed to bear his own hardly less considerable natural abilities with grace.

"Is that why you avoided all my Calls?"

"The summons, you mean? No, I really didn't hear them. I had a lot going on. They twitched at the edges of my mind. And I suppose I didn't _want_ to hear them."

"What did you have that was so much better than this?" Aven asked bitterly.

"A life I chose," Blake said.

He'd just accepted a position to teach history at a university. He'd been quite involved in radical political circles, and he wasn't sure that occupying the Chrestomanci role quite aligned with his interest in reform. He'd always been wary of his magic, content to exercise whatever talents his personality alone granted him. He'd dodged entry in the national standardized tests that sifted high-level magic users, and he'd ignored the subject as best he could. Sometimes, though, he wanted coffee, and coffee suddenly existed near him. He frowned at it, drank it, and later tracked down (and apologized to) whoever he'd stolen it from, sheepishly explaining his own clumsiness and returning the pot and offering them a couple of pounds for the contents and the inconvenience.

And sometimes he woke up to find himself in a different world, and irritably had to push himself back to sleep on a rock ledge or a city street or wherever he found himself and get home, because he had class in the morning. If it happened on weekends, he generally went exploring before returning. It hadn’t truly discomforted him since childhood, when he’d figured out what must be going on and not thought it worth bothering his parents about, and he quite liked visiting the other Series. That had been about it.

"Choice is a prerogative of the very, very lucky," Aven told him.

"I know." Blake breathed out. "But I want it for everyone, not just myself. I would never have forced you to leave your own home, Aven. You belong here, far more than I do."

Aven's eyes narrowed. He knew that. "I'm afraid it's enough that you might have done. That you had any right to do it.” Aven raised an eyebrow at Blake. “Shall we begin?"

Blake gestured to the room’s Chesterfield sofa, and he and Aven sat down on it, next to one another. Aven tugged back his jacket and parted his shirt with his splayed fingers. Blake frowned at Aven’s chest, pressing his own fingers around the edges of the wound. Aven held himself quite still.

"You don't know how it's done—" Aven began.

"Sh," Blake said suddenly. "Orac,” he called over to the grate, “do whatever it is you need to do to get ready to give it back. Disentangle the thing, if necessary.”

"You might kill us both," Aven told him. "Orac and I. You need—"

“—someone good with pushing a bit of life into things, I should think," Blake said, laying the flat of his hand on Aven's chest and shoving, a little. Aven's eyes went wide and his chest filled with a screaming riot of alive alive alive and it felt _so_ good, like being drunk and still in control. Aven hadn't felt this _good_ when he'd been given his degree results. He’d expected them, worked for them. This was a sudden and superlative joy, and he wondered how often being Blake felt like this and wanted to pull Blake's hand into his wound and not release him.

"Will that do?" Blake asked, frowning, lifting his hand from Aven’s skin (Aven fought an urge to lean after him).

All that, and Blake didn't know. He just instinctively understood what was needed–he saw without knowing what he was looking at.

"Yes," Aven said, rough as a sob. His voice quelled, subsiding into something more normal. "I think you're perfectly qualified. But the technical aspects are still beyond you."

"Not beyond you," Blake said brusquely. "You did it, and you're going to fix it. Orac, the _heart_."

Sullenly, the little flame sighed and yielded up a blackened, pulsing, flame-scorched thing. With a gentleness Aven wouldn't have supposed those large, forceful hands capable of, Blake took Aven’s heart. Aven felt him take it. Felt it juddering in Blake’s hand.

For his part, Blake had never wanted to protect anything so much. It was solid and soft in his palm, and he suppressed an urge to stroke it, to brush the ashes off and reveal the ripe red flesh beneath. He could feel its strength, the persistence of its beating. Why had Aven wanted to give up a thing so evidently worth the having? Blake supposed they should stop and research and prepare, but he felt they could do this, right now, that they could _absolutely_ do this together, and that doubt and hesitation would only expose Aven to greater risk and ruin it.

“Can you guide me?”he murmured to Aven, his hands poised above Aven’s chest.

“Yes,”Aven said with a swallow. “Yes, I… think so.”

"Orac," Blake said calmly, "you're going to live. You're going to burn, self-contained and free. You'll eat the air, and you'll rest safely here, and you'll _live_. Do you understand me?" Each word carried his will, and snapped out of him like a whip. He willed into Orac what Orac had wanted to feed off of in Aven, conjured the power out of the air. What associations, loyalties and vulnerabilities Orac had now were his own.

"Perfectly."

"Aven, come here." Without thought, Aven leaned forward. His fingers twitched the fabric at his chest aside once more. Blake frowned in concentration and slid a finger into the wound, and then more. He eased the heart in as Aven bit his lip so as not to make noise. Blake was up to the wrist in his chest. Aven’s heart pulsed and spasmed with life in Blake’s hand.

"Stay," Blake breathed, "knit up and stay where I put you, where you belong."

Around Blake's fingers the ventricles rewove. Blake eased his grip and wove out through them, navigating as gently as if he were in a jungle full of vines he didn't want to jostle or break. His fingers slipped out of Aven and caught at the edge of frayed skin, dragging across it in a way that made Aven's eyes widen and his breath catch.

"I can take it from here," Aven murmured, and Blake rolled his eyes.

"We're doing this together. You'll only hurt yourself, being stubborn. It's like any wound—you need to take great care, after the operation."

Taking Aven's hand in his and interlacing their fingers, Blake traced their conjoined hands over the edges of the wound. Aven laid out the pattern for the working and Blake followed him, pushing into it, watching with wonder as the flesh sealed. Blake’s power felt full and rich in Aven’s working. There was a little awe in Blake’s eyes, and Aven wanted to stop him and say yes, that, _that's_ what magic is, do you see now how wonderful it is? Have I made you understand? Because for some reason it felt important that Blake understand him.

Aven's chest was whole, and their hands lingered on it a moment, pressed together. Blake drew his own hand back slowly.

"Did it—?”

"Oh, yes."

Blake swallowed. "Right." He looked up and Aven, and suddenly a full, wonderful smile broke over his face. "That wastricky, wasn't it? What we did, just now. I got the feeling it was—"

"A fairly monumental working," Aven admitted. "Though not, I’m afraid, an entirely new invention. Pioneered some centuries ago by the sorceress Sophie Hatter, of Ingary."

"You'll have to tell me more about it. And about everything." Blake brought the hand that had been in Aven to his mouth in thought. It was clean. The wound had been magical, and there was no dripping blood, no trace of where it had been. Yet somehow Aven found the gesture… uncomfortably intimate. He straightened his shirt and jacket, feeling self-conscious.

Blake's words, however, reminded Aven that he was _also_ thoroughly annoyed. Aven smiled, mockingly.

"Ah yes. I forgot. I'm your slave, now, until you see fit to release me."

Blake rolled his eyes. "Are you always this melodramatic? You're my colleague, and I'm keeping an eye on you until I decide you've recovered and aren't likely to run about the related worlds endangering yourself and others. And until I can convince our delightful ministerial colleagues of that as well, I suppose."

Aven didn't quite see fit to tell Blake that he had never previously enjoyed that state of health, and that it was thus unlikely to return to him. "How long do you expect your miracle cure to take?"

"I don't know, Aven," Blake said irritably. "Why, do you have anything better to do?"

"There are always good opportunities for an Enchanter of my caliber."

"You worked here before," Blake pointed out.

"Under different management," Aven said silkily. "And with, of course, some hope of preferment."

"You don't need the money," Blake told him.

" _That_ is a matter of opinion. Mine is that more money is never a problem. Besides, perhaps I simply want the challenge other positions would provide."

Blake laughed at him. "I'll just have to be sure I challenge you superlatively, then, won't I? But for the present, you're not going anywhere."

"Does it strike you that the person who needs me to show him where everything is is not, ethically, ideally positioned to be my jailer?"

"As a matter of fact, no," Blake said pleasantly. "I'm the best candidate for the job you have. Orac, will you be staying on?"

"This is, I take it, the most advanced magical research facility in the related worlds? And Aven, with whom I still possess some degree of linkage, is considered its preeminent researcher?”

“That is what they tell me,”Blake said, casting a glance at Aven. “Repeatedly.”

“Then I shall stay. I have many fascinating lines of enquiry of my own to pursue."

"Welcome aboard," Blake deadpanned—though he found it interesting that Aven’s offer, once made, counted for something with the little demon, even now that he no longer required it to survive. Blake tilted his head to address Aven. "Shall we go to the kitchen and make ourselves some breakfast?"

Aven stared at him. "We have servants for that. Paid government servants.” Had Blake not been letting them do their jobs?"

Blake winced. "I'm not very comfortable being waited on."

Aven rang for breakfast and bullied Blake into the formal dining room. While waiting, suddenly starving from the night’s exertions, Aven took an apple from the fruit platter and bit it in Blake's general direction in a way he hoped was redolent with meaning. Blake arched an eyebrow like he was not to be intimidated by fruit. He took a peach and bit it—decidedly undramatically, as though he'd just wanted a peach. _Bastard._

Aven then took a sadistic pleasure in watching Blake awkwardly sit there, craning his head and visibly wondering if he could help, as Carol, one of the maids, brought in kippers, toast and kedgeree. Carol shot Aven a grateful look—Blake had been interfering with their activities for days (mucking up their preparations for staff dinner by making himself a sandwich and taking up space at precisely the wrong time). The transition period was going to be a lot smoother with Aven around.

"Thank you, Carol.” Aven tilted his head to address Blake. "What has your magical education been like, thus far?" he asked crisply, unfolding a napkin on his lap. Nothing like good enough, he knew that much.

"Nonexistent, really,” Blake said, taking a sip of his tea.

Aven paused. Was that hyperbole? Perhaps Blake had been taught very poorly, or most unusually. "You're Enchanter-level. It's mandatory."

Blake shrugged. "You can opt out. It's difficult, but not impossible." At the look Aven was giving him, Blake felt compelled to add, "I did all the basic health and safety components."

"You mean you completed the mandatory workshops they make you do in secondary school, along with sexual education? The cartoonishly basic, mandatory workshops about not accidentally immolating your enemies? _That_ is what you took?"

Blake got the feeling that rather than reassure Aven, this disclosure had made Aven want to kill him, and possibly the Minister for Education besides.

"Are you simply so incurious about the world around you—?” Aven seethed.

"Of course not!" Blake practically shouted at him, because it was the least-true accusation that had ever been leveled at his character, and somehow the thought of Aven thinking it of him was particularly hideous. "I just did seven A-levels and had a tough degree and was involved in a lot of societies, because believe it or not, Aven, there are plenty of ways to learn about the world and how it works, and relatively few of them involve bloody magic!"

"I might as well throw you in with the children in the Academy!" Aven hissed.

"That might be a good idea," Blake said, regaining control over the conversation by regaining his calm, "but why don't you _start_ by showing me around the place, properly, and we'll see if we can't figure out some way to expedite the process." Blake slicked a bit of the kipper on his plate free of the bones (unconsciously using magic to help him with the fiddly process) and slid a bite onto his fork neatly with his knife. He met Aven's gaze frankly. "I need you. As you can see."

Aven knew he should have taken this confession as an admission of weakness, but when Blake said it, it acquired a peculiar strength. It felt as binding as an oath. It felt like a certainty. I need you, and I am going to have you. I need you, and you are going to give yourself to me.

Aven finished his tea in a gulp. "After I've slept. And after you’ve slept – you’ll find you need it. A working like that doesn't hit you all at once, but it does hit hard."

"All right," Blake conceded, and Aven found Blake’s concessions gave him a particular feeling of satisfaction.

Aven grinned at him unpleasantly. "I hope you're prepared to work, Chrestomanci. This will be neither easy nor pleasant."

"You mean you won't make it easy or pleasant." Blake said, entirely unruffled. "I think I'll manage."

Disgustingly, Aven rather thought he would.

***

Blake had trouble understanding what the systems governing magic were at first. To him magic was something you just walked in and saw and pushed at. Which was well and good in _theory—_ Blake certainly had raw strength—but it was going to cost him lives, out in the world. On Calls, he’d be up against problems that would require him to know the rules and use them, fighting magic users who knew exactly what they were doing. Blake was initially impatient with attempts to make him understand the differences between witchcraft, enchanter’s magic, wizardry, sorcery and magician’s magic. But when Aven found the right approach, Blake was grotesquely quick off the mark.

He listened intently when Aven talked, and he had a good understanding. He also listened to any tutor or expert Aven stuck him with with concentration and interest, but it was Aven who, unhappily enough, conveyed information to Blake best. Blake needed to understand why something worked, to see it as a system, and, if at all possible, to know how it had come to be and what it affected now. He thought like a historian and an activist. Aven, with his theoretical background and knowledge of the historical trajectory of magic, was best positioned to put things in such a way that Blake nodded and remembered them, said 'Right' and pressed on. Difficult concepts, tricky magic, things requiring a lot of energy or a deft touch—Blake got them all, sometimes with more difficulty than Aven had and sometimes with less. Aven found how easily some things came to Blake enraging, even as he began to take a queer pride in shaping Blake’s magic, in the aptness and attention of his pupil.

In everything he did, Blake proved he was exactly the man for the job, even if he had come belatedly. Blake had an innate sense of consequence and responsibility, and an inventiveness Aven didn't know that he could have instilled in the other man had it been lacking. And he was eager to do the work well. Blake was as dedicated and focused, in his way, as his predecessors had praised Aven for being. Aven had been tempted to think Blake good for nothing, seeing that he'd done everything he could to avoid becoming the Chrestomanci, but that fell apart under Blake's passionate determination to help people, his unyielding ethics in the field. And he'd had to go out into the field before he was anything like ready—the job didn’t stop needing to be done just because Roger Blake was woefully under-prepared. With Aven at his side (like living training-wheels, Aven thought darkly), Blake had plunged into the work, seemingly without fear or hesitation. Once he'd seen his duty, Blake had accepted it and shouldered the burden wholeheartedly.

People they met liked Blake. The castle staff liked him, once he learned to butt out of the kitchen at peak time (Aven had included that injunction in his exhaustive tour of the facilities). The children in the Academy adored him—they were only terrified of Aven. (All the adult experts took lecturing turns, and Aven's advanced classes were simultaneously interesting, showy, and a subject of universal dread.)

Aven believed that, because he'd been an obsessive, brilliant model student himself, everyone else had it in them, if they simply tried and were aware of the opportunity they'd be wasting if they didn't. That said, as a student, Aven had also never thought the Academy’s rules applied to _him_. He’d broken curfew whenever he felt like it, generally without being caught. He’d appropriated cider from the village pub while still a schoolboy (he’d left them some money in exchange, but even so). He’d thought age-restrictions on certain forms of magic were probably a sensible idea—for other people. There was a childhood portrait of him in the gallery from his grandaunt’s tenure in which he looked like a choirboy, but the artist must have had to actually endure the sitter at some point, because there was also a suggestion of unholy light in his eyes, and his smile was only sweet from a certain angle. Young Aven had simultaneously been a darling and a little terror—which made sense, as Blake would have used different language to say something essentially similar about him now.

Aven continued to occupy the tower room he'd always used, with only a few years' interruption for university, during which it had been left fallow (he’d still used it on vacs, and no one had ever really thought he wouldn’t be coming back). His grandmother had used it when she'd gone to school here, and some time before her it had belonged the second Chant Chrestomanci, and now it was thoroughly Aven’s, his spells woven deep into every atom of it. This one for protection against theft, when he'd had to learn those runes. That, an experiment for freshening the air—it hadn't quite worked, but it was useful to prop another spell on, so he couldn't be bothered to tidy it away. The paintings wouldn't fall from their moorings, the door didn't creak even when it hadn't been oiled, his notes were impossible for anyone but him to find unless he specified otherwise, no one outside the room could look in the window and see what he was doing, and the curtains blacked out light absolutely. Sound was not permitted to travel from his room to the outside, nor was it possible to harm him here, in most ways he could think of.

Over the years, he'd appropriated (with the amused knowledge of the staff) his favorite tapestry, his favorite vase, and the really good pillows. He might have bought new and expensive things, but these were his, and they were very fine, and he liked them just as they were. Orac occupied the room's little hearth (or the fireplace of the study-cum-laboratory that Aven used in the research wing when he was working). His bedroom's extensive shelves were lined with the books he had pulled from the Castle libraries, his own collections, and a few tasteful souvenirs from other worlds, garnered over the course of his work. A stone from another planet, from a Series that had other planets. The delicate, clean skull of a bird he'd found as a boy in 5, when he’d accompanied his Aunt Erudition on a diplomatic call. A netsuke from 12-B. A dragon scale, given freely. The bottled promise of a mermaid, in case he ever had need of it.

Aven never invited Blake to his room, but Blake sometimes called Aven into his to discuss business. Blake sat at the room’s desk while Aven refused a seat. There were a lot of rooms in the Castle to have a conversation in. Aven though about pointing this out to Blake, but never did. If Blake was going to offer him a drink, as was apparently his intention, then perhaps the salon, or Blake's study, might be the more natural venue. Was Blake trying to make some kind of point about which of them the handsome master suite belonged to? Aven certainly wanted the huge four-poster with its thick curving pillars and embroidered canopy. He knew just where he'd put his favorite vase in this room and had some serious plans for the place involving De Gournay wallpaper that just wouldn't have worked with the smaller dimensions of his current space. But Blake was generally not quite this petty, and so Aven was left rather at a loss. Blake seemed to be waiting for Aven to relax, and, when that didn't happen, dismissed Aven looking a little puzzled and sad. _That_ Aven didn’t understand either. Blake was never puzzled long, and what the hell did Blake have to be unhappy about? Which of them was Chrestomanci here?

The most awful day had been when he’d had to show Blake the garden. Teaching him how to find it. Taking him to the weed-choked foot of the stair, and up the railless, crumbling steps. Walking through it clockwise, ahead of Blake, so Blake would see how it was done, and hearing Blake's gasp of wonder as they passed through seasons and climates from all of the worlds. Shutting his eyes against Blake’s appreciation. Continuing until they reached the centre of the garden itself– the heart and core of the old, ruined part of the Castle, the part that was linked essentially with the Chresomanci him or herself.

At the centre of the garden, a babbling spring ran under an apple tree. Beside them stood a ruined stone gate. The hours Aven had spent here—and still, the place loved Blake more. Aven could feel it. The spring babbled harder for him, and the apple tree shivered in delight at his coming. Lord and master, home at last. And Aven just a steward.

Swallowing his bile, he taught Blake to walk widdershins out, to slowly work his way back to the top of the ancient stair. Blake didn't ask what the place was for, and Aven was glad, because he felt he would have had to kill Blake if he had. The place was itself, and there was no _for_ about it. It was simply the best part of the world, and Aven was lucky, he supposed, that it liked him, a little. Enough.

He'd realized that he couldn't entirely blame the garden. He rather liked Blake himself. No–he admired him immensely. Blake was becoming, perhaps had simply become, his best friend, as well as someone Aven wanted to beat senseless. Just another example of Blake exercising his relentless, merciless charm, Aven supposed. Blake’s making himself likeable, despite every good reason Aven had to resent him, was another insult. Perhaps the worst. Because Blake was still his jailer. And because Blake in turn, seemed to like Aven well enough—in the way he liked David and Will and Carol and bloody everyone. Blake was Aven’s closest confidant, the person he worked out his theories with and spent most of his time with and who he regularly trusted with his life in the course of their work. And Blake had recently suggested, over lunch, that they might get to know one another and _try and become_ friends. As if Aven didn't already know Blake, as if Blake weren't terribly easy to know, even as he had his own strain of subtlety.

No wonder Blake and the garden got along—neither of them quite matched what Aven wanted. But Aven went down to the village pub with Blake at least once a week and let Blake tell him interesting things about history and chatted over board games with Blake until Blake seemed to understand what they so obviously were to one another.

At night, he could still feel the pressure of Blake's fingers in his chest. The feel of the other man's magic inside him. He shifted and pressed a pillow to his breast bone to ease the pressure of a phantom hand. It felt as though the spell needed to be cleaned out of him—as though a bit of Blake's magic had slipped from him or broken off and lodged in the wound, now healed but for a scar that reminded Aven and anyone who could see it (if they’d heard the rumors) of what Aven had tried to do, of how stupid he'd been. That Blake had left a trace of himself behind was unsurprising—an instance of typical Blakean over-reach. Sheer clumsiness. Aven kept thinking he should figure out exactly what the problem was and deal with it. He kept thinking he had more pressing business, and that he even… liked the ache of it. Constant and low and sometimes sharp in the night. Humming, flush with power.

***

Aven and Blake had been twenty five when they'd begun working together. When they were twenty seven, when Aven had relaxed somewhat after the debacle with Orac, and right after he’d pulled off a dazzling triumph in Series Seven, saving Blake's life and a country in the process, Blake said,

"You're ready, you know."

"Ready for what?" Aven asked. They were sitting next to each other in Blake's study, having a nightcap and discussing their long-range plans. Blake was lounging on the Chesterfield, and Aven was perched in the chair next to him. His hand, he thought idly, resting as it was on the end table between them, could have touched Blake's curls, if he’d reached out. Aven blinked. The alcohol was apparently getting to him.

“Aven, they'll take that– what you did in Series Seven. I've been waiting for something big enough to give them.”

Aven looked at him without comprehension, and Blake pressed on, seeming not to notice he wasn’t taking Aven with him. “And you’re all right, now. You wouldn't try and throw your life away again."

Aven felt a chill descending on him. "What are you talking about, Blake?"

"I can tell the council that you're your own man again. You'll be free, Aven. You can go wherever you like."

Aven clenched his hand around the glass to keep it from shaking. This was—This was banishment. After all he— And he couldn't, couldn't _ask_ to stay. How dare Blake. How _dare_ he.

"Aven?" Blake asked, tone soft and curious, as though he'd expected Aven to be excited.

Well, Aven felt like laughing, why shouldn't he be? Why _wasn't_ he? Freedom and the run of the world. Orac to boost his power: a significant resource, even without the advantages offered by their initial bargain. He’d be unstoppable. And yet. He remembered that terrible cold aching feeling, when he'd ripped his heart from his chest. And wherever he went, there Blake would be, inside him. Unless he let the stitches spill open and cleaned his wound and put himself together again as best he could without help. He wouldn’t ask Blake’s assistance, and he wouldn’t let anyone but Blake touch him like that. He didn't know what it would feel like, anymore, to be without the shard. It was a part of his body, now. It was his.

"Yes?" Aven said in answer, tone totally noncommittal.

“I'd like you to stay." Blake cleared his throat. "You’re needed. Here. And you do match the portraits."

Aven did laugh, a very little. As much as the joke deserved. He'd always wanted Blake to acknowledge his prerogatives, but suddenly it felt so inadequate. He wanted Blake to acknowledge _him_. To say ‘I don’t know how I’d get along without you, Aven’, and to mean it as Chrestomanci and as Roger Edward Blake.

"Increase my salary," Aven suggested. He'd been paid all the while, of course, during his period of semi-imprisonment, and he had no need of more money. He had a fortune, somewhere or other, and everything he wanted was here. He didn't even knowwhat was reasonable to ask. Actually, Aven wasn't even sure exactly what he _did_ get paid, let alone by what margin he might expect that to grow. But he needed to say it had been something that had kept him here—something other than the fact that he couldn't imagine what else he would do with himself. Couldn't imagine cleaning out his room and cleaning Blake's magic out of his body and launching himself on the world, like a ship without any course.

Right now, he could go where he liked and do what he liked because he had a harbor. What would be the point of going anywhere if you weren't coming back? Why acquire anything if you couldn't bring it home? Why do anything if he didn't have everyone here (Blake first among them) to tell about it?

"I'll talk to the ministry," Blake told him. "But of course they'll do it. You're priceless."

And suddenly Aven saw that Blake had only been offering him a choice, and that Blake thought choices were important, even as Aven never believed they were entirely real. Aven had his freedom, and that meant something. It made home fully home again, without a trace of the gaol about it. Aven had denied any sense of shame out of pride, but he _had_ felt a little harried and ragged, a little uncomfortable under Blake's supervision rather than in his company. He saw now that Blake had been waiting to give him this. Blake had asked him to stay, even if it hadn't been the appeal Aven had wanted. He wanted to give Blake something. Notin return, precisely. He just ached to do it. Blake had a way of making Aven yearn to be serviceable and… kind, to him. To find some superlative, difficult to imagine form of kindness and offer it up.

"Excuse me," Aven said abruptly, leaving the room, and then Blake didn't see him for a few days running. He tried to tell Aven that the salary increase had gone through (fair enough—Aven hadn't advocated for a raise since he'd started, and he'd become far more valuable to the government since then), and Aven had essentially told him to bugger off unless something was on fire in another world and his presence was requested and required.

Blake had raised an eyebrow at the closed door of Aven’s study and left him to it. Disturbing Aven at research was always a risky proposition. He asked Carol to make sure the stubborn brat ate, but other than that Blake felt he'd just have to wait it out. Always tedious—he relied on Aven, and he missed him when he took himself off like this. Aven never would have let Blake do it to him, Blake thought with a mixture of resentment and fondness.

Aven seemed high on a lack of sleep and almost playful when he did emerge. The way he swanned into Blake's bedroom and purred, "Blake, come and see this" made Blake curious and, well, hard under his desk, actually. Aven’s fey moods were always dangerously attractive. Thankfully Aven was back in the hall by this point, too eager to wait–no. That line of thought was _not_ helping. Blake made himself think about the approaching bi-annual stock inventory for a moment and what a terror Aven always was about it. Surely that would stave off his desire to shove Aven (wild-eyed and flushed and pale and thrumming with contained energy, with tight-wound excitement, and _his_ , having agreed at last to stay on on equal terms) against the wall of the corridor and kiss him.

He got ahold of himself (agh), took a deep breath and joined Aven, letting himself be led up to the other man's workshop. And god, he was glad it was 'Blake' now—Aven’s early habit of irritably calling him Chrestomanci, rubbing it in for both of them, had been galling, cold, and had, to Blake's horror, turned him on a little. He'd definitely had at least one incredibly inappropriate dream about Aven angrily using it in bed. And every part of that was insensitive and wrong (and _incredibly—_ No).

They arrived at Aven’s study, and Aven flipped open the case he was keeping his work in (for effect, Blake had to assume) with theatrical finesse.

"Look," Aven breathed. "Can you see it?"

It was like… an orrery. Made of magic. A contained central ball like the sun. Other spheres rotating around it. Thin strings between them. Self-contained and interlaced, each part dependent on the others for balance. Elegant. So very Aven.

"It's beautiful," Blake said, wanting to touch it and not daring.

Aven smiled at him. "It's yours." Aven stroked one of the strings, lightly. Adjusting it. "Revelatory work, if I do say so myself."

"And you do," Blake grinned at him.

"Well, naturally. Recall that when you came to us," _came to me,_ Aven thought distinctly, "your magic was—"

"I think you called it a horrific rotting mess," Blake said pleasantly.

Aven laughed. "Yes, I did, didn't I? Now, with tutelage and the little discipline you find yourself capable of exercising, it's rather more like this." Aven indicated his model.

"What, that’s… me?” Blake said, confused.

Aven shook his head, smiling. "No more than Charles Minard's map of Napoleon's Russian campaign _is_ the campaign. It’s a graphical vision. As the designer, I'm sure I'm at least equally reflected in it. And besides, it's meant to enfold your energies, so it's not precisely fitted.”

Blake couldn’t stop watching Aven’s fingers playing with the thing, like a delicate toy. Couldn’t have stopped listening to his drawled, almost lazy explanation if he’d tried.

“I suppose you are the substance of it, and I am the shape,” Aven continued. “This represents the culmination of several lines of research I've been working on for a while, now. You’ll recognize some of them, if you think about it. Orac assisted me, naturally. It's the most sophisticated protection magic in the related worlds," Aven said a little dreamily. "And I'm going to put it inside you."

Blake, once again, worked on not embarrassing himself. "Tell me what it does."

"Gladly. I'm quite proud of it, you see." Aven wore an expression of supreme self-satisfaction. Blake, again, thought _hard_ about the bi-annual inventory and Aven's unattractive capacity for waspishness about really trivial appropriations. How he'd threatened to dismiss Will for scrumping in the garden he tended. Aven hadn't really _meant_ it, but even so, it had been pompous and awful and rude. There. Now he could just about bear to hear Aven say things like 'And I'm going to put it inside you' in that soft, certain voice.

"It locks here, here and here." Aven gestured. "You can use your magic without exposing your weak points. It will keep you from losing lives—not always, but it has the standard wards and then some. Nothing like a Series One life-ripper or de-power gun will work on you, while you wear it. It doesn't need either of us to power it, after its installation. It affects probability curves in your favor, a little—augmenting the way that, as Chrestomanci, the universe already loves you and bends to you. No matter what happens, no one will be able to destroy the core of you—this will keep your memories, your personality and your magic itself locked safe inside. Then you, or someone else at the Castle if you're incapacitated, can pop it open like so and—there, you see? All you have to do it remember how to operate it. It's a simple enough mechanism."

Aven admired Blake's expression, like a chef watching a connoisseur eat. "You really have come a long way, Blake. Learned to appreciate fine work."

"All your doing," Blake said, careful to look at Aven's device rather than at Aven, who he had hardly needed to learn how to appreciate.

"Yes, I know," Aven said in that damn purr again. And Blake wanted to tell Aven that he loved this—the work and the castle and them, the power and the practice and the knowledge that he was really helping. Aven had given him something rich and fulfilling, had introduced him to a way of thinking, and had done it well because he'd loved it so much. Aven loved and understood and appreciated magic more than most people ever loved and understood and appreciated anything, and he had given that to Blake, despite everything Blake knew he'd taken from Aven. The orrery was not only an amazing invention, it would be a way to have and keep a little of Aven in him, forever.

"Take me through everything," Blake said. Aven’s eyes lit up and he got out the diagrams and Blake thought, now that Aven was free again, perhaps he could broach the topic he'd only hinted at when Aven was technically in his charge. Later. He knew he wouldn’t do it subtly or well right now, when his entire body ached for Aven (his heart, he knew, had the worst of it).

After Aven had indulged himself by explaining his brilliant creation in entire, Blake braced himself as Aven eased the thing into him, bit by bit, strings following clusters. He laid a protective, balancing hand on Blake's spine while he did it.

"How does it feel?" Aven asked, breathing on Blake's neck and tracing the layout of the orrery through the flesh of Blake's back with a fingernail, making sure it all sat untangled.

 _Safe_ , Blake thought. So safe. Blake pointed out the few spots where it needed slight adjustments, and Aven's magic sank into Blake’s chest and twitched the device, pulling and prodding until it wasthere and not there. Invisible in its comfort, and yet Blake felt _different_. Like growing up, or the end of mourning, or settling into a vocation.

"Could anyone have one of these?”he asked.

Aven shook his head. "It needs an Enchanter of something like your strength to bear it—the whole principle of the thing hinges on that. And it would need someone of mine to design and install it. Besides, the designer would have to have my knack for seeing a power distribution, which, frankly, is rare. It's only suitable for a very few people in the world, and when I publish on it those few will be able to sort out for themselves how to go about making their own, if they want something of the kind. Though I suppose some elements of it will be commercially viable, broken down. There will probably be patents and the like in it. That's not really my field."

"Thank you," Blake said, straightening up.

Aven dismissed this. "It's my job. Which," he smiled, "I have been informed I've received a raise for."

Blake snorted. "You deserve more than a twenty per cent increase for this."

 _Ah_ , Aven thought, so that was what it had been. He’d just seen the new total on the slip Blake had pushed under the door.

"You can tell them so in my performance review," Aven told him. He was vaguely aware those sorts of things occurred, and vaguely aware Blake filled his out quickly and grudgingly because Blake hated paperwork.

"Do you want to be talked up, Aven? Shall I tell them that you're the best complimentary-magician I've ever worked with?" Blake said, serious but also teasing him. “Two years ago that wouldn’t have meant much, given my inexperience, but now I’m in a position to appreciate exactly how good you are.”

Aven rolled his eyes, stepping back. He had a feeling he was only particularly good at working with Blake. It was Blake who had the true genius for mixed-workings, so much so that he'd even managed to call the ability out of a recalcitrant Aven. Still, it was difficult to deny that some of his best work had been done with Blake. Enough to suggest that the fullest expression of his power might beas Blake's compliment—a notion he obviously found inherently demeaning. Blake might have said that there wasn't anything lesser about playing a different role, and that only Aven's perception made it so. Blake would honestly have believed it, which made it more than a little irritating that Blake wasn't _his_ assistant. Oh, now _there_ was a promising image. Blake offering _him_ a working like this, Blake worrying whether _he_ would come home safely from a Call he'd had to answer with little warning or prior information, Blake marveling at _his_ strength—

But then Blake _had_ given him a gift, just like this (albeit by accident). A shard of Blake lingered in Aven, and he worried it like a charm, and felt its weight like a bit of jewelry he always wore. Aven supposed, with the orrery, that in part he'd wanted to do the same to Blake. For Blake. To make himself equally inescapable.

"I'd prefer if you told them the truth,” Aven said, giving Blake a sardonic look. “That I am precise, that I know what I'm doing, and that it pays off."

“Oh, all of that's true," Blake agreed. “But it’s also not what makes you quite as good as you are.”

Aven raised an eyebrow at him. “Going to tell me what I’m missing, Blake?”

Blake shrugged. “You want things more than almost anyone I've ever met. Putting your brilliance aside, you're as deeply emotional as you are rational and driven, and you have a strong sense of yourself. It’s the heart you were willing to give up that _makes_ you, as much as or more even than your vaunted logic. I don’t think you’ll ever see what’s remarkable about yourself on your own, so someone ought to tell you."

Blake just… said it. Like it wasn’t… revealing and… utter tripe, and…

Aven swallowed. "Sentimental nonsense." It was grotesque. And Aven didn't want Blake to stop.

"Perhaps," Blake said, looking him over. "But I like a bit of sentimental nonsense, now and then. I have that council meeting, and remember we have a check up on S-2 after lunch. Aven? Thank you for the gift."

He was gone before Aven thought to remind him yet again that he had only been doing his job.

Well. Hadn't he wanted Blake to acknowledge him? It wasn't Blake's fault if that had been more than Aven had bargained for.

***

Aven learned it had been, actually, a _lot_ more than he'd bargained for the next time the two of them were properly exposed to danger. A potion-manufacture plant had been slack about its safety protocols and was going up in flames, and Blake was outside while Aven was in. Aven had to keep himself alive and, if possible, to dampen the blaze before it consumed more of the chemicals in the factory, setting off further chain reactions. At the threshold of his own magic, he'd found himself pulling (hand over hand, it felt like, straining against his limits) and grabbing—some of Blake's. There wasn’t time to think about how.

He checked that he really was alone in the building, and threw it all into the working.

He threw a bubble around himself so he could breathe and gave it some resistance against the heat, and a similar bubble around the entire building. He pushed the most of the air in the building through his outer cordon, largely cutting of the fire’s oxygen supply. Aven held the build of its heat in the room–the air that escaped in a rush was oxygen-rich, but only about as warm as the day itself. In the vacuum, the fire seemed to seize and die—but Aven knew better than to trust that. Fire was just the visible manifestation of materials vibrating at speed, thus becoming hot. Pulling more of Blake's magic to him, he used the last, super-heated ribbon of air to draw off the energy via convection. Where could he— _Oh_. Well, he might as well try it. He opened a portal onto empty space in another series. It was one of Blake’s– a proper Chrestomanci portal, and creating it sent a shiver of awe through Aven.

He was careful with the membrane. Opening a door onto a vacuum that could suck his bubble through it wouldn't solve any of his problems. He pushed the heat through the membrane, and it dissipated harmlessly in the void. He sealed the portal carefully. In the factory, there was no sound—there was no air for vibration to travel through. Aven held his spell for a few moments, making sure, and then, slowly, slit the bubble around the factory and let the air creep back in. After a few minutes he unsealed his own bubble, brushed his suit with a cleaning spell (fires were always dirty, why did people think of them as purifying?), and walked outside.

Blake, at the head of the group of factory workers he'd rescued from the building, was looking at Aven with a measure of wonder. Blake left them for a moment, walking over to Aven for a private conference.

"A side effect of the orrery," Aven suggested casually, as though he weren't triumphant and high on magic, _Blake's_ magic, and his own cunning.

Blake shook his head. "No, I don't think so. This—" and Aven felt distinctly odd as all of Blake's magic and some of his own rushed out of him, “—is probably a side effect of the orrery." Blake waved his wrist and Aven's magic snapped back where it belonged, though it still… ‘ _tasted_ ’ a little of Blake. "Whereas the other way ‘round—"

Aven's eyes narrowed. Blake was right, and Aven suspected he knew what had enabled this. He had been able to do this for two years, then—he’d just never needed power to quite this degree before. That, or he'd never felt comfortable enough to call on Blake to help him before.

Right now he didn’t feel comfortable. He felt as though Blake was about to ask him some awkward questions.

"I suppose there might still be a trace of your magic left in me, after the—Let's call it a heart transplant.” Aven grinned wryly, not letting his growing worry show through. He didn’t exactly like Blake being reminded of his criminal folly, either.

"Not possible, you'd have noticed that," Blake said, and Aven was… relieved or annoyed that Blake didn't think it within the realm of possibility that he might have noticed and left it just where it was.

"Not necessarily," Aven said, thinking quickly. "Of course the wound and the scar have a certain feeling and texture to them, so I—"

"They hurt?" Blake interrupted him. " _Aven,_ why didn't you say anything? Let me—"

"No," Aven snapped, stepping back. "No," he tried again, more normally. "They don't hurt me. I simply mean they feel _present_. And naturally, given that at the time I was experiencing a host of rather novel sensations in close proximity to one another—" He was babbling. Was this getting anywhere?

Blake nodded generously. "You didn't quite know what was what. It all bled together. Yes, I see that now." He favored Aven with a rueful expression. "Sorry to have been so clumsy."

"The perils of inexperience," Aven said, waving it away. "As I said, it doesn't hurt."

Blake had been effectively virgin, when he'd come to Aven. Though he'd initially found it frustrating, Aven was now glad of that. There had been few bad habits to train him out of, and Blake's magic was so entirely his by education that Blake's spells all looked a little like Aven's, if you watched them carefully. Aven had arranged things just as he liked them. Besides, 'clumsy' was hardly the word for the inspired, intuitive, risky work that had given Aven back his heart. The way Blake's fingers had slipped through his veins—No, hardly clumsy at all.

"Do you want help getting rid of it?" Blake asked, squaring himself to clean up the mess he'd made. All duty.

Aven's eyes narrowed. "It's excessively useful. You can see that. Don't you trust me not to misuse it?"

Aven acted like he didn't understand the enormity of what he was asking of Blake. A month ago, Aven had been, technically, Blake’s prisoner. Now he wanted access to Blake's life-force, for use at his discretion–but he'd had that all along, apparently, and he'd given Blake his own in turn. And more than that, fundamentally, Blake _did_ trust Aven.

"I know you wouldn't. I just thought it might irritate you. Shall we leave it where it is?"

"It's practical," Aven said curtly.

"Oh," Blake smiled at him, "very."

And Blake went back to yell at the company director and demand that he admit responsibility.

Aven told the factory workers they'd probably better go home for the day, and called in a magical disaster specialist crew local to the Series to start cleaning up this mess. That night Blake pulled the string of his orrery out of his chest to look at it, and twitched its delicate chain between his fingers. He and palmed an orb, delicately hefting its weight, and thought 'a part of me is in Aven, right now, and always will be.'

***

Drinks alone after dinner, a few weeks later. Blake on his Chesterfield, splayed before Aven, who looked on a bit primly, grateful for his own much-better posture.

"They're already anxious about finding my successor," Blake said.

"Well now," Aven gave him a thin smile, "you did have us all rather worried before. It seems a sensible precaution."

"There've been suggestions I marry," Blake told him, rolling his thick-cut glass tumbler against his lip. "They don't care about the gender of this suggested spouse—not now that magical artificial birth's old hat, But they’re keen that one is produced, and from there –children.” Children who might succeed Blake. Because Blake’s power derived from his being a nine-lived Enchanter, without correspondents in other Series. And if there was only one of him, then of necessity any children he produced would likewise be unique. A few of Aven’s ancestors, the first Chant Chrestomanci among them, had managed to have children and _not_ breed multiple Chrestomancis by partly siphoning off those children's powers and excess lives with Series One technology. The current thinking was, apparently, rather different. If you could _ensure_ an heir...

Of course it wouldn’t work, not for more than a generation or two. The universe had a way of adjusting after that sort of thing, of swapping in extra lives and souls somehow. It had to, or every genocide or other extinction event would have caused massive magical disruptions in other Series as people failed to be born, generation on generation, world without end. The magical community of 12-A hadn’t realized it would work on this individual scale until Christopher Chant’s daughter, a direct ancestor of Aven’s, had had children of her own who were simply Enchanters. (The Chants had inbred a little, here and there. Waste magic not, want not.) But for that ‘generation or two’, you could enjoy the convenience of a miniature dynasty.

Aven had academically considered the mechanics of lives and magical potency before, of course. When they’d been hunting the Chrestomanci, before Blake’s arrival on the scene, he remembered having argued in favor of some contingency planning along these lines. But now, Aven found the government’s suggestion repulsive. He didn’t feel their concern was sensible. At all. His posture grew rigid in his chair.

"No," Aven said. "Absolutely not."

"You're against the idea? I'm sure you'll be surprised to find that I'm not greatly in favor of it myself."

"Obviously, I'm not. You are, of course, the last person they should have asked to breed fit-for-purpose children. They'd have had better luck with me, and they wouldn't have had any. But that isn't what I meant."

"No?"

"I meant that if you marry, I'll leave,”Aven said. Blake laughed, surprised, but Aven insisted. "I mean it, Blake."

Blakelooked taken aback. He sat up, regarding Aven carefully. "And why would you do that?"

"Because it would spoil everything," Aven said, as though this was obvious. "Listen, Blake, we're managing perfectly well by ourselves. We don't need interlopers." Blake looked strangely excited by this, which baffled Aven, who pressed on, determined to make Blake see. "We'll find the next Chrestomanci the normal way. Romantic entanglements would only be a pointless distraction from our work."

Aven certainly didn't want to hand the management of the household over to whatever sensitive plant Blake managed to dredge up at a political rally. The thought of it incensed him. The whole social structure of the place would come down around their ears, and Blake would be forever attending on some wife or husband and children and it would ruin _everything_. Aven knew he himself had some responsibility to one day produce another Chant, in or outside of marriage, but the idea of Blake doing something similar was intolerable.

Now Blake frowned. "Would a romantic entanglement _have_ to be a pointless distraction? Under _any_ circumstances?"

Aven shrugged. "I think so. Honestly, Blake, if you're troubled with sexual inclinations, can't you just keep going into London and finding someone discreet to share an evening with?"

Blake regarded him with a little confusion. "Is that what you think I do?"

Aven was confused right back. "Isn't it? I simply assumed. I always find it efficacious."

"That's so—" Blake burst out, apparently annoyed by this. He regained himself. "It hardly seems like you."

Aven sensed his disapproval and bristled. "You may be my—" Aven's lip twisted, “— _employer_ , but you're hardly in a position to judge how I handle my personal life, so long as my conduct is ethical and discreet."

"Am I not?" Blake half-shouted, getting up to pace. He turned back to Aven. "Don't _you_ want anything more than that?"

"I've never been excessively involved in a relationship, and I don't intend to start now.” Aven snorted. When had there been time? Some fumblings with the other school children had given way to a few collegial flings, but Aven had worked himself to the bone becoming the sort of person who could take a complete ignorant like Blake and make him a passable Chrestomanci, with the potential to one day be a credit to his office, in a bare two years. Blake knew that. When had he had _time?_

Besides, why was he castigating Aven for not having made opportunities to form exactly the sort of attachment that would draw him away from the Castle? Perhaps Aven could bring a wife or husband and family here—some of the other attaches did—but it wasn't common, and it was, in Aven's mind, a little hard on the families, not to feel the place they lived in fully their own. It seemed especially awkward where those partners and families weren't in the business. Will and Carol were all right because they were both staff—if Carol had had a job selling houses in Birmingham, what would they have done then?

"You _never_ want that?" Blake asked, seeming surprised and still terribly disappointed—in him, Aven assumed. Aven hated people being disappointed in him. He'd taken care to be so uniformly impressive that it had never happened with Blake before now, but he was discovering it was his least favorite form of the experience.

"Why do _you_ want it?" Aven hissed.

"How often do you go to London for… _that_?” Blake demanded, doing the maths in his head. Aven did supply runs and errands a few times a month. The driver took him to the station and he came back on the train the next morning, having stayed at his half-brother Sebastian's house in the city. He might have just transported himself, but Aven tended to keep himself relatively fresh, magically, in case there was a demanding Call, which meant avoiding major workings like physical transportation where possible. Blake had never believed that prim, disciplined Aven had done anything more deviant with his time in the city than return overdue library books.

"What business is it of yours?" Aven asked, hurt. It was just… sex. Sometimes when he was in London he took advantage of the opportunities it afforded to get decent Szechuan food or actually palatable sushi. Sometimes he took advantage of the opportunities it afforded to meet someone in a bar and go back to their place. Lately he seemed to pick mostly men, which was a little odd for him—typically he kept a fairly even gender balance. He wondered if he shouldn't shake up the trend. The point was, it didn't mean anything.

"None, I suppose," Blake said sharply. "Sorry, I'm not… feeling well." He left his glass half-finished and went to bed, and shutting the door gently behind him in a way that showed he'd have liked to have slammed it.

Aven worried that Blake had someone in mind, and that Aven had inconvenienced him by throwing a professional spanner in the works. _Who?_ Aven's eyes narrowed. Not someone he knew. But then would Blake really seriously consider marrying someone Aven didn't even _know?_ His own right hand, the man he _called_ his best friend? Well, if Blake’s plans had been spoilt, then it served Blake right for thinking of bringing someone into Aven's home. Aven wasn't budging an inch. It was him or some spouse, and Aven flattered himself that Blake needed Aven far more than Blake needed anyone else. Aven had made sure of _that._ Priceless, Blake had called him. Indispensable, more like.

***

By the time another year and a half had passed, the tension about the matter of Blake's threatened marriage had long since subsided between he and Aven. Aven still remembered and occasionally worried about it, though, especially when Blake looked at him a little sadly, in a way that suggested to Aven that Blake was thinking about whatever it was that Aven was standing in the way of. Aven responded by making himself even more necessary to Blake. Blake could look at Aven sadly all he liked—he needed Aven completely, and Aven wasn't going anywhere. But largely their friendship and professional partnership was free of these concerns. Aven was now rather proud of Blake's craft. It would never be as neat as his own, because Blake fundamentally cared about other things, but Blake made up for it in a variety of ways. No one looking at his work could say he hadn't been well and carefully trained.

That is, it _was_ free of such concerns, until Aven introduced some of his own. On a very ordinary day, when both men were twenty eight, Aven realized he adored Blake. Admittedly, it wasn't long after a quite exceptional mission to Series Eleven—one that had involved Aven risking his life for Blake, and Blake telling him not to be bloody stupid because Blake had lives to lose and Aven didn't, and Aven thanking him sarcastically for rubbing it in. But nevertheless, the day of the realization itself was fairly dull.

Aven woke up early and went for a ride. The Castle stables were no luxury—many of the animals were magical to some degree, and still necessary to various forms of Castle business. Liberator, foaled from a line that stretched back to Aven's ancestor's horse Syracuse, who had himself been purported to have a touch of unicorn blood in him (Aven hardly believed that—people would blame a touch of dwimmer magic in an animal on anything, honestly), had initially been surly with him due to his extended absence. A research project had absorbed Aven totally for some days. But he'd slipped her a peppermint and she'd forgiven him, and condescended to remind him that she was fast and high-spirited and quite good company, _if_ he cared to pay attention to her.

"All right," he murmured to her as she slowed down after a particularly energetic canter, "you've made your point. I'm terribly sorry. I'll remind Jenny to take you out for a proper run, the next time I get too preoccupied. Or perhaps Blake, now that he can ride without humiliating himself."

There was enough Pinhoe in Aven's ancestry that he could feel her grudging acceptance of the offer, and he smiled at her bad temper. He loved difficult, challenging things.

Liberator snorted at being called a thing, even if he hadn't said it out loud.

"Equine persons?" he suggested dryly.

Now, she intimated with a pert shake of her head, he was just being insulting.

Aven came in for breakfast and passed Blake in the hall. Blake, clad in brown trousers, decent boots and a white poet's shirt, mumbled, 'Morning, Aven' as he walked by. He was flicking through the day's correspondence in his hands, weaving around one of the temple cats that populated the grounds by instinct. Aven smiled slightly in return and thought, 'I love him absolutely.' Then he'd stood there, stock-still with shock, as Blake, having passed him already, rounded the corner and carried on with his own day—well, of course he did. And of course Aven loved Blake. Oh, god. How long had this been going on?

He took a rapid account of himself. The results were distinctly unpromising.

He rather suspected he'd loved Blake since the day they'd met. Something about being thoroughly beaten and rescued and trusted and fought for, and then allowed to show how very good _he_ was, all in one day. If Aven had ever had a relationship of any significance before this, he might have recognized what was happening. But of course he'd also wanted to kill Blake and take his job, or be him, or something along those lines. That had probably confused his ability to understand the issue, somewhat.

Now that Aven knew, he couldn't seem to put it away. He felt like he did nothing _but_ know. Liberator got tired of him thinking about it. Aven had to ask Jennifer Stanley (a Pinhoe on her mother's side, and thus some distant cousin or other of his), the woman in charge of the stables, to take out Liberator for him until it wasn't quite so embarrassing. He hoped there was some sort of expiration date on quite how embarrassing it was. Jenny had griped, but he'd reminded her that she'd saddled (hah) the animal with its embarrassing name, and so she could damn well do right by it. It was a communal stable, but Liberator was his, Jenny’s, and now Blake's by casual, unspoken agreement. Blake had used her to beat the bounds since his Investiture, securing the Castle’s perimeter.

Jenny had rolled her eyes and reminded him that her mother did expect Aven to drop round for Sunday roast at Woods House at _some_ point this year—Pinhoes still kept a very traditional idea of clan. Jenny, as the Gammer in waiting, had a fair amount of pull. A year and a half ago, Aven had briefly suspected her of being Blake's intended marital target. After all, Eric Chant had married a Pinhoe Enchantress, so it was hardly unheard of (even though Jenny was only a sorceress herself). But Jenny had reminded him that, as he well knew, she was dating Tarvin Amagon, the local solicitor. So whatever Blake might think (and she really didn’t believe he had a pash for _her_ ), it wasn’t on the cards. Which was her choice, and convenient for Aven, but, Aven thought, a little ridiculous. Who wouldn’t throw over Tarvin for Blake?

At the time, Jenny had also (with a strange delicacy that reminded him that they were kin, that they’d known each other since childhood, and that if he had anything at all like a sister, it was Jenny) suggested that he _really_ needed to think hard about why he cared quite so much.

Well, Aven had now thought fairly hard, and decided he didn't like the answer. He’d been pathetically, hilariously jealous, and as if that weren’t bad enough, he hadn’t even realized what an ass he was making of himself and why. Now that he’d obtained a scrap of self-knowledge, he was hardly finding _it_ pleasant either. (Jenny had roughly a million times more dwimmer than he did, and thus she and Liberator probably perfectly understood one another, and were probably laughing themselves silly over the contents of his conscious thought. He didn't like to think about that either.)

Before he’d realized he was mad about Blake, Aven had sometimes taken himself in hand, laying his other hand on his chest, running the sharp jut of his shard against the pads of his fingers or clenching his hand over it. He’d thought he just liked the sensation—the low burn of power under his skin, the sharp contrast against the rolling pull of less complicated pleasure. But now Aven knew he'd liked fingering this little bit of Blake while coming in his perfectly sound-proofed room, and now the thought of his orrery made Aven feel a little like swooning. He toyed with its design and thought about adjustments like a schoolgirl doodled the name of her crush in her notebooks.

On a few occasions he gathered his courage and told Blake he wanted to make some improvements to his device. Now, sinking his fingers into Blake's chest made Aven have to do the elementary charm that prevented personal disturbances from becoming noticeable. He enjoyed the memory in private, though. Blake patiently bearing it for him, looking into his eyes with calm and steady affection. _"Is it ready now, Aven?"_ God, was it ever. And _thanking_ him after. Aven felt a little guilty about that.

Not guilty enough, however, to tell Blake all about it. Aven had never been careless. He had to work out how it would work, if he and Blake were together. Aven was hardly contemplating a fling. Say then, for the sake of argument, they courted and, eventually, wed. In that case, he imagined life would go on much the same as it did now, only Aven would get to enjoy Blake. In the master bedroom, with De Gournay wallpaper. Perhaps his current apartment should be left as it was, and he could have a study separate from his lab. He'd be the first Chant to be husband to a seated Chrestomanci, that would be something (not the first Chant to be spouse to one, however—his great great grandaunt had that one).

He was aware that he was getting ahead of himself.

But while he _was_ thinking about it, he had to consider whether his relationship with Blake would change, in the event that he was successful. He had the Castle well in hand, he was Blake's partner in work besides, and he'd now thoroughly assured himself that Blake cared for him, more than for whomever he might have wanted to bring on as his spouse, if indeed he _had_ been angling to bring in someone else. So as long as nothing went terribly wrong, Aven supposed a romantic alliance between them would be a deeper, better version of their current relationship. And he didn't intend to lose Blake. If there were problems, they would fix them. That was their business, after all.

Aven had to determine how Blake was likely to receive such a proposition. He watched Blake for signs of interest. Unfortunately this was difficult at present. Blake was distracted by the Series One problem, and showing little interest in _anything_ other than figuring out why Series One kept spilling out strings of sub-series Worlds and then brutally choking these off.

In Aven’s considered opinion, the whole place was diseased. Series One was the oldest of the related worlds. The Great Mages of that Series had, long ago, been the ones to discover the other worlds, and had developed the naming conventions that governed them. The Series was highly technologically advanced, with a whole galaxy of planets at least, and had produced weapons the Castle staff had to work to keep from being transported outside its boundaries.

It had gotten particularly nasty on the ground, as well. Most of the galaxy was ruled over by some sort of repressive Federation. The Great Mages had stopped recognizing the authority of the Chrestomanci and had closed their borders in Erudition's day. You couldn't even take their directed Calls. The rumors Blake's people heard of the place were technically interesting (something was distinctly wrong with the probability curves, Aven suspected), but grim.

Blake seemed to think the Series' terrible politics were his business; Aven had mixed feelings about that. He believed that Blake was capable of handling himself, but not necessarily of reversing the political direction of a whole Series. He agreed with Blake that isolationism was incompatible with the correct execution of the Chrestomanci role, and that the realm's decay at a magical level probably wasn't unconnected from its seeming political collapse. Series One’s decay _might_ be a problem for the Chrestomanci, or it might be something quite apart from their jurisdiction. But then Blake had a rather broad idea of their jurisdiction.

Some Chrestomancis had waited around to respond to Calls and contented themselves with making the rounds, checking in at official gatherings in various Realms and not asking too many difficult questions of whoever was in power there. They'd been significantly government-aligned.

Blake was far more interventionist, amenable to oversight but unresponsive to pressure to merge his office's independent interests with those of the state. Under his direction, the Castle undertook long-term projects and developed its own initiatives and concerns. Blake was also more interested in fixing the problems that had resulted in the misuse of magic than in simply cleaning up the mess and issuing the punishment.

Blake still had problems with the Chrestomanci role—they just weren't the same problems he'd come in with, though there was still significant Venn overlap between the sets. The whole idea of swanning in like cultural imperialism personified to tell people what they were doing wrong and where they could get off struck Blake as inherently dubious (but he was hardly going to ignore a request for help on these grounds). He didn't like that the position was so relentlessly provincial—why _always_ British?—but he didn't know what to do about it, either.

Blake resented the _l_ _aissez_ _-_ _faire_ approach of some previous post-holders, which to his mind was just a means of allowing small problems to become big ones and letting corrupt power-structures embed themselves more deeply while you weren't looking. He also resented the government's assumption that their office was in any way involved in its trade interests and territorial conflicts. The Castle served the people at a different level, and couldn't afford to become involved in British party politics. He welcomed Ethics review boards (well, no, he found them exasperating, but he also thought they were necessary) and he'd gladly help relieve a natural disaster or the like, but his people weren't State Wizards in that sense, no matter that the government paid their salaries. The British government of 12-A paid the Chrestomanci division because the misuse of magic could rapidly become everyone's problem, and because it was hardly practical to pass an alms tin around all twelve Series. Besides, they cost nothing at all, compared to some departments.

Blake performed the role in a manner consistent with his ethics, and thought it far better to do _something_ and risk potential personal moral contamination than to stand by. He admitted he'd been naïve in some of his objections at the start. In some ways, Aven had shaped the direction of his tenure. Having such a gifted technician and theorist on staff had _enabled_ Blake to ask how and why things were going wrong. In particular, he’d been able to look into _how_ Series One was failing, rather than just letting it get on with it, or staring on it in horror—all those screaming, dying little branches sloughing off the sickening main coil.

Blake had begun to nurse the terrible suspicion that the fact that One _was_ the oldest of the Related Worlds might well behind its collapse. Perhaps the worlds had a lifecycle. Perhaps they were witnessing the unstoppable decay of Series One, like astronomers could watch the death of a star. Perhaps their own Series would someday collapse in a similar fashion—‘this is the way the world ends’—and if it did end, would it be replaced by a new growth, or would everything eventually come to a close? The prospect of watching a _universe_ die was terrifying and awful.

Or perhaps that was getting ahead of things. Maybe Erudition Chant’s failure, in allowing herself to be barred, and the severe misuses of magic they suspected were going on in One, were the root of the problem. The Series might be saved, fixed, rejuvenated, if they could either determine the magical cause of its decay or, alternatively, fix its symptoms and thus restore health to the whole system.

With Aven’s help, Blake was planning something quite new—a long, embedded incursion into S-1, a fact-finding mission. Blake would report back regularly and return home after a few weeks. Using his information, they would devise a grand plan of attack. Blake couldn't send many transmissions or simply come and go as he pleased (though only Blake could escape from S-1 at a moment’s notice, and so only Blake could undertake the mission).

There were few magic users in S-1, compared to their own magic-rich world, but those there were mostly tended to be high-level. It wasn't quite clear how the distribution worked, but if the Worlds threw up a second or third life for someone who was a powerful enchanter in 12-A, such a person was likely to live in S-1, and, of course, to be similarly magical. These magic users also tended to be thoroughly under the thumb of the Federation—the council of the Great Mages had been entirely subordinated to it, the last Chrestomanci division heard. This state of affairs meant that Blake might be detected and detained, if he risked too many violations of the border S-1 had erected to keep him out.

One person’s magic wasn't much protection against massed armies with weapons like the Federation had. Oh, Aven thought Blake could handle himself. There was no one more competent, and Blake had his orrery besides. But Aven could see why Series One’s Great Mages (who couldn't just pop through to another world to escape and stay there) had caved.

Aven disliked the plan, but thought Blake had a point. They should at least know what was going wrong with S-1, and whether it was about to become their problem. Besides, billions lived in S-1, and it was (probably) the Chrestomanci’s job to see they kept on doing that.

One of _him_ was probably among them, though Aven deeply disliked thinking about it. It reminded him of what he wasn’t—whole and entire unto himself, like Blake. And the idea of some version of himself, living in that grim, techno-fetishistic and techno-fascist mess of a world, disquieted him. Aven didn't even like computer-magic, thought it was faddish and gimmicky and impure. He knew some scholars made something of it, but Aven hadn't any time for the subfield. He barely thought magic users should bother with electricity in the home. As a back-up, he supposed—in case one was very ill, and all ones’regular running spells failed due to some catastrophe. Since the Castle was wired, Aven used the amenity. But he flicked on his electronic lights with a spell so casual it hardly merited the name anyway, and had no real idea how an electric current worked.

Aven decided to broach whole inamorato matter with Blake once they'd dealt with S-1. When Blake was less obviously bothered by the brewing disaster that the Series' odd behavior might represent and less obsessed with plotting out a response, he could better give Aven a clue as to whether he was amenable. And even if he didn't, with prompting, give Aven some sign, Aven thought he'd still find a way to ask—just as soon as Blake wasn't too distracted to give him a full, satisfying response.

They were twenty nine when Aven handed Blake his coat—an old, pre-barrier S-1 garment tucked full of emergency magical and practical supplies—said he'd expect Blake’s call in a week, and reminded him that he could pull out any time.

"And of course, call me if you run into anything you can't handle.” Aven smirked at him.

Blake grinned back. "Oh, of course.”

Aven didn't otherwise make much of Blake’s going—it was like any other departure. In a week, he spoke to Blake via a voice-spell, and Blake told him it was all rather worse than they'd believed. Earth was a nightmare—everyone lived in domes, and there was some sort of mass eugenics project going on. He'd made contact with some of the locals who objected strongly to the government's habit of routinely drugging the population, though, and he thought he might be able to learn more, perhaps to undo some of this.

"It's not entirely your affair," Aven had reminded him. None of that sounded like misuse of magic.

"What did Dickens say? 'Mankind was my business?'" Blake's tone took on a hard edge, but it was still fond. It was almost Christmas.

"Will you be home for it, then?" Aven asked, knowing Blake would understand.

"I'm not certain," Blake admitted. "Though I'm sure the Castle looks wonderful, as always."

“Elegant." Aven smiled, knowing the compliment was meant to mollify him in the face of that unsatisfying non-answer and appreciating it nonetheless, "because, after all, you are not here to insist that 'Christmas is about color'."

"Enjoy your dull white lights," Blake said, and Aven could hear him rolling his eyes.

"Oh, I'm enjoying them," Aven said with smug contentment.

Blake drew a breath, obviously preparing an insult about the effect—probably going to tell Aven the Castle no doubt resembled a well-lit hospital or business, tidy and cold and joyless, as seasonal as a syringe, but instead he whispered,

"I have to go."

Aven… worried, rather. But Blake checked in as normal the next week, and the next. He argued that he needed more time on the ground, another several weeks. Aven said it had been long enough—Blake was about to miss the holiday. Not, Aven thought crossly, that _he_ cared over-much—but the whole staff generally gathered for the celebrations. The small party that remained for the day itself would feel tiny and disjointed without Blake there to get too drunk and mock the King's Speech and tell Aven passionately how well his mulled wine had turned out, _really_ well, as usual.

More importantly, Blake had spent plenty of time in this dangerous situation to suit Aven. He had a job to do, in case he’d forgotten, and it didn’t just involve S-1. The Castle staff couldn’t field his Calls forever. Blake told Aven he was doing this his way, and that was that. Aven seethed and hung up on him. Bloody Blake, countermanding him like that. Didn't he know Aven knew what he was talking about? Didn't he know Aven had his best interests at heart? (He should—he’d held the damn thing in his hands, and he ought to know it was his.)

Drunkenly, Aven wanted to call Blake on Christmas. But that might render Blake that much more unsafe, and so he waited until their usual contact time a few days later. Blake apologized for having been a bit of an arse when they’d last spoken. Wished Aven a happy new year—the warm burr of his voice making Aven miss Blake more even than he did already. He hadn’t spent so much as a week away from Blake since they’d met. Perhaps he might have understood he was in love sooner, if he hadn’t always been glutted with Blake, full of his presence, sated with the sight of him.

Blake told Aven that he thought he'd be home in four weeks. Two more passed in the same fashion, with Blake telling Aven the unpromising essentials of what he'd learned about the place.

On the third week, Blake didn't call.

Aven didn't panic. Not quite yet. He expected a make-up transmission in two days' time. He thought it very likely that Blake had been interrupted, or somehow prevented from reporting in.

Nothing came.

There was, of course, a stand-by protocol. They had naturally talked about this possibility. Aven, armed with his own coat full of supplies, pulled all the magic out of himself to get to Blake’s power, preparing to use it to open a portal to the alternate Earth. But when he reached Blake's magic, he found it impossible to use. It was… choked. Covered in something. Slippery and gross, as though it had been covered in too much soap, or slicked with honey and rolled in dirt.

Repulsed and afraid, Aven dropped it, then scrambled to pick it back up again. He could barely handle the stuff, let alone accomplish something as difficult as transmission with it.

Aven gathered a war council and explained the situation. David Evans and the other attaches were worried. David, running a hand through his ginger hair, pointed out that they'd _know_ if Blake was—

“Dead,” Aven finished for him sharply, and David nodded, continuing. There would be certain signs. An heir would probably appear.

Aven told them that he could sense Blake a little, through some protection magic he'd given Blake. He chose not to be explicit. Blake's orrery was private, between the two of them. Everything Aven had published on the topic had been theoretical—a blueprint for such a thing, certainly not a picture of what Blake had let Aven do to him. And anyway, what he was saying was a slight misdirection. The shard in his own heart was what actually enabled him to know Blake's condition. Aven told the war council that Blake was somehow… not himself. Ill, or—He shook his head. He couldn't explain it.

Finally, Aven managed to use the garden, Orac, his own power, and an Enchanter’s pentacle to get into S-1 past the barrier. Blake was right—it was awful and deeply unfamiliar here. Even their own elderly reports of S-1 misled him—there were certainly no pretty ring-trains about the place anymore. Aven had no idea how to go about finding Blake.

One contact Blake had directed him to, a woman living outside the Domes, was paranoid, but somewhat valuable.

Blake had said he was working with those dissenters he'd run into, in something rather naïvely called the Freedom Party. It turned out, though, to Aven's utter lack of surprise, that outsiders, and possibly the Party itself, considered Blake to be the Party’s new leader. Blake had become far more involved than he'd implied, and it had gone worse than Aven had realized. Blake had been taken in by the Federation, and not seen since.

Using the orrery as an anchor, Aven ran a trace for him in Series One and found no sign of Blake.

He must have transported, then, to some other world. He must have fled, that made sense. After all, Blake was Chrestomanci—it was no more likely that he was here than anywhere else. Less likely, even, if he’d been in danger where he was.

But no other world yielded him up. When Aven tried to get back into S-1 he found they'd radically changed the barrier (tipped off, perhaps, by Blake’s activity, or by his own). The barrier nearly scattered him to the wind as he tried to get in, and he examined the thing in horror. He and Blake had been forced to invest considerable time to work out how to get through the last version. In her own time Erudition had devoted considerable work to it, and made little progress. He and Blake had only managed to get as far as they had using her notes. What sort of resources must this Federation be using? What was he going to do now?

Aven returned to the Castle in a panic and shared his information, giving their people everything he could on the barrier. It took them months to get through—Aven barely let the staff breathe for working, and was certainly no kinder to himself. Once he’d managed to return, he found that Blake’s contacts had dried up. No one could or would tell him anything about Blake. He stared at the computer terminals in immense frustration, knowing that some expert here would be able to use one of these things to tell him whether the Federation knew anything about what had happened (or been done) to Blake, but not even knowing how to contact such a person.

He worried his shard, fingers twitching too fast. He could feel his chest pumping rapidly. His shallow breathing seemed to take in too little oxygen. He knew, in a distracted sort of way, that he must be almost hyperventilating. He didn't _feel_ any closer to Blake here than he did on any other world, and he _should_ , if Blake was here. Had Blake been stupid, or had he run? Surely he'd _run—_ he was the Chrestomanci, travel between the worlds was his first instinct. But Blake might have been too injured to do it, or defied that and stayed. But if he _had_ stayed then _why,_ why didn't he—?

Someone demanded his pass, which Aven wasn’t able to produce. He tried to bluff, but his anxiety must have been quite visible to the guard, and he’d never been a competent actor. He should have run, but _he_ wasn’t able to slip between worlds without concentration and effort.

Aven slammed the man to the ground with a spell, buying time, but this called down a whole squad. Aven was shot in the arm and barely managed to call up the portal and escape home.

It took considerable time to heal him, in 12-A—they had little information on S-1's weapons' developments over the course of the past century. By the time Aven was better, they'd changed the barrier. Again.

Perhaps Blake would figure it out. He always had before. Perhaps Blake would sort it—he was the most powerful Enchanter in the Related Worlds, one of the cleverest men Aven knew, one of the bravest, the best, and so surely he could—He _must._

Blake never came back.

Aven built an elaborate scrying spell and set it to hunting Blake’s consciousness. It compiled for a long, long time, months, checking every soul alive in that Series. It finally reported back a negative for S-1. It clicked on to S-2, and Aven knew it would be the work of years. People said the spell was a masterpiece and tried to discuss all the research knowledge it would generate with its creator, and Aven had wanted to kill them. It was useless, it was nothing, it wasn't finding him Blake. There should have been nowhere Blake could hide from him, and _yet_.

Aven Called and Called but Blake didn't answer to his title, Aven’s summons. Aven would have given Orac his heart again in an instant, if he’d thought it would help, but he couldn’t see how it could. All the power in the universe couldn’t make this right.

Aven had almost been crying, furious and desperate, when the trooper had demanded he produce papers. The distraction had nearly cost him his life, and he'd never really indulged in his grief. It came out as anger that tried the patience of staff who had known him all his life, as a lack of interest in the life he'd loved because it didn't have Blake in it any more.

Months passed before someone said they couldn't continue on like this, scrambling after legitimate Calls and letting some bounce. There _had_ to be a Chrestomanci. Blake was not dead, but could not be found, and had no evident heir. There was an obvious solution.

"I don't want this," Aven murmured at his Investiture, to no one in particular. If they took Blake's name from him and made Aven answer to it when Called, how could _he_ ever come when Called? How were they ever to find him?

But the staff looked on with pity, and Will squeezed his shoulder and withdrew, and Jenny nodded at him because they both knew he had to, and she was with him, in case that helped even a little. This was all Aven had ever wanted, and he thought he might be sick. Damn Blake, _damn_ him. And damn me, too, Aven thought.

He should have _said_. No consideration of his own vanity or pride or emotional safety should have prevented him. If he'd loved Blake—and he had, and he did—he ought to have thrown himself at Blake's feet and said, 'I'm the castle, I'm the garden, I was made and intended for you, and you for me.' If Blake had been destined to be the Chrestomanci, then surely _he_ had been designed, his magic and his lineage and his life, to be Blake's. And Blake his. He saw that now. Why hadn't he _said?_ He hated Blake, for not coming home. For not _running_ home to him at any sign of real trouble, as he'd promised he would. For not telling Aven how it was, what they were to each other—he must have seen. Blake had seen so much. Blake had seen him, more than anyone else in his life.

David read aloud the letter of authority from the Ministry. "Kerr Aloysius Chant Aven, last of his line, third of his name, ninth of his house to hold the office, and of the title—"

It was all he had ever wanted, and it meant nothing. Worse, it hurt.

Aven recognized his duty. To the office, to Blake, to himself. He would beg the garden to accept him as a proxy, use the sympathy between them to force it. With the aid of devices, Orac, and what of Blake's magic he could scrape clean and use, he could pass between worlds and act as Chrestomanci. He wouldn't be as good as Blake, but they needed something. Someone. And he swore, to all assembled, that he would do all this to the best of his ability. He put a hand over his chest, where his heart had been ripped out and replaced, his fingers resting on his shard.

"And I will find Blake and bring him home," he finished, eyes bright with intent. "If it takes me my life.”

Aven did Blake's work, and looked for Blake for seven years.

 

 


End file.
